About

Seize the Bean - A Light-Hearted Deck Builder about Berlin!

€137,334

pledged of €20,000 goal

3,038

backers

You are a seasoned barista, skilled in the craft of coffee. You've had it with your day-job and set out to open your own café in the beautiful, diverse and thriving city of Berlin. Competing against other rival cafés, you set out to be the best, no matter the cost!

In Seize the Bean, players compete to get the most good reviews by the end of the game. They do so by successfully serving customers in their line. Each turn will provide them limited actions which they can use to attract certain types of customers, gain resources, or even boost their actions for more effective results. By looking for opportunities in the ever-changing city, the players can take the right products and upgrades and build up their shop and clientele to victory.

Customers form the heart of the game, providing you with those precious points (good reviews), although potentially the most problems too (bad reviews). Each group of customers represents a Berlin archetype and has their own needs, wants, and abilities. A typical game of Seize the Bean will use 6 of the groups, giving you the potential to customize the city and play a different game every time!

(Please note that the final two groups, Boardgame Media and Quality Beasts, are promotional add-ons that are not included in the retail base game.)

The so-called “chrome” bits of the game are the life-sized coffee beans, miniature milk cartons and hyper-realistic sugar cubes (really, you will want to eat them… but don’t!). In our prototypes we’ve modeled and 3D printed these ourselves, locally in Berlin, but for a manufactured version we’ll be going with resin, thanks to our unlocked stretch goals!

Most people think the gimmick of the game is the scoop we’ve demoed at events. However, this was added in order to make the acquisition of beans go faster and be more manageable in the game. In the end, it turned out to be quite a source of enjoyment for our play-testers! (Please note: plastic cups are not included in the game.)

Players earn points for good reviews and negative points for bad reviews. Each review has a fun, thematic message attached, bringing some of the real-life social networking to the game. (Many of our backers will be providing the messages on these reviews!)

All cards are 75x50mm in size and will be 300gsm ivorycore with professional grade aqueous coating. The tokens will be 700gsm greyboard with a top and bottom layer of 300gsm including matte varnish, while the dual-layer player boards will have a 400gsm top layer. The beans, milk and sugar cubes will be poly-resin. The barista meeples will be machine cut wood that’s painted, varnished and silkscreened on both sides. The rulebook will be 128gsm gloss paper and the box will be 2mm greyboard wrapped in 157gsm gloss paper.

Players will take their turns over the course of a game day, serving their customers, taking actions with their barista meeples and acquiring new customers through word of mouth, based on what products and upgrades they have built into their café. At the end of each day, players draw customers from their deck to their line.

When taking actions, players can acquire new resources as well as select customer, product and upgrade cards from the city (the central card pool) to add to their café. These actions can be enhanced by product and upgrade cards.

When applying word of mouth, players can only attract customers who like the products and upgrades they have built into their café. The trick here is that even if a matching customer is not wanted it still must be taken!

Gameplay continues until a set amount of good reviews have been earned, at which point the players take a final turn where they can only serve their customers.

Don’t like reading rulebooks? Jump over to Cardboard Rhino’s YouTube channel to learn the game with Eleni:

Watch as Rahdo runs through a game of Seize the Bean:

Didn’t get enough? Here’s his extended run through:

Wanna see Anthony and Frances go head-to-head? Check ‘em out here:

Too serious? Need something a bit more wacky? Dig into a rerun of Penny's live stream in Tabletop Simulator here:

Or join up with Slickerdrips to see him and “Marty” build their coffee empires:

We’ll be making available several add-ons for purchase during the campaign and afterwards in the pledge manager. If you’d like to purchase an add-on during the campaign, simply raise your pledge amount to account for the add-ons of your choice.

As an international team we care greatly about making our game accessible to as many people around the world as possible.

While Seize the Bean is generally language-independent, the humor and theme is best conveyed with supportive text on the cards and tokens. We’d of course need the rulebook to be translated and we’d also love to make unique boxes for each language. We’ve priced this out and we added stretch goals for the foreign language versions.

We are proud to say that we are offering backers the choice of an English, German, Spanish or French edition of Seize the Bean!

Our publishing partner, The Wood Games, will be running a campaign for the Chinese version on February 20th, 2018.

Are you a publisher interested in licensing Seize the Bean? Email us at sales@qualitybeast.com to get in touch!

Shipping will be charged after the campaign in BackerKit. Please bear in mind, that these shipping costs are estimates right now. We’ll calculate the final shipping of your rewards and add-ons in BackerKit at the end of the campaign, once we know the true game weight and all of the items you add to your order post-campaign.

As the icons above denote, we are happy to be offering EU-friendly, US-friendly, and Canada-friendly shipping.

Are you a retailer and interested in purchasing Seize the Bean? We’d love to hear from you! Please get in touch with us via Kickstarter or email at sales@qualitybeast.com!

If you'd like to reach out to us you can do so via email at growl@qualitybeast.com or via the following social media platforms:

Risks and challenges

As our first crowd-funded project the biggest challenge is that we are learning as we go. Even so, we’re confident we can deliver a fun game, made from quality components, arriving to our backers at a timely pace.

We believe this because we’re very fortunate to have support from other experienced partners and creators with whom we've built strong relationships over the last two years developing and demoing the game. Despite it being our first run at this, we’re not alone!

As for the nitty gritty details: manufacturing is our hardest hurdle to climb, because while the game is playable with tokens or cubes we believe the full, thematic experience comes from having the plastic or resin pieces. This only poses a challenge financially, and so if we can gather enough momentum together, we can easily smash through the stretch goals unlocking our premium components!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €44 or more
About $54

Decaf Lover’s Edition

Show your love of Blaue Bohne with this special edition of the game!

This is an Espresso pledge level, but decked out with a special box sleeve. The sleeve has been designed to honor our partners at a Berlin-based roastery, Blaue Bohne. (And to note: there will be no increase to your shipping price for the sleeve! Also to note: this is the same sleeve as in the Coffee Lover’s Edition pledge level, just not including the actual coffee beans.)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €53 or more
About $65

Double Espresso

Coffee for everyone!

This is an Espresso pledge level, but decked out with a 5 to 6 player expansion. The expansion will include 2 dual-layer player boards, 16 more Friends & Family cards, 6 more Founder cards, an extra pack of barista meeples and some extra resin resources (as needed).

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €99 or more
About $121

Coffee Lover's Edition

Show your love of hot bean juice with this special edition of the game!

This is an Espresso pledge level, but with actual espresso included. You’ll receive three 500g bags of coffee, each with a special Seize the Bean customer group branding, all blended to perfection by our partners at Blaue Bohne right here in Berlin! You’ll also receive a special “Coffee Lover’s Edition” box sleeve. (And to note: there will be no increase to your shipping price for the coffee!)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €179 or more
About $219

Skim Milk White Chocolate Mint Affogato

Become a loyal customer!

This level combines the Flat White and Low Fat Soy Caramel Iced Latte pledge levels: we’ll design a customer based on you (or an idea you have) with text and art to match, plus your name and a message of your choice will appear on a good review token (subject to our final discretion).

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €199 or more
About $243

Freeze-Dried Cinnamon Steam Matcha Mocha

Last chance to leave your mark on the game!

This level combines the Burnt Cappuccino and Low Fat Soy Caramel Iced Latte pledge levels: we’ll design a customer based on you (or an idea you have) with text and art to match, plus your name and a message of your choice will appear on a good review token and a bad review token (subject to our final discretion).